MAPLE JUICE COVE, MAINE

MAPLE JUICE COVE, MAINE

I think about my July/August trip to Maine a lot as it was a lifetime event.  I want to go back and often think about buying a little cottage in the mid-coast region.  If only.

I found it difficult to paint en plein air there because the colors seemed flat, the light key very high and the water vistas vast.  Can you see what I mean by comparing and contrasting the photographs below with my completed painting?

It took many days of plein air paintings and corrected paintings to see how important it was to zero in on a smaller area.  Paintings can't capture the vastness the eyes see.  But translating the view to a painting takes practice.  It is so important to sketch before painting.

On my last day on the mainland of Maine  I wandered looking for a coastal painting opportunity.  Way too often what I wanted to paint was on private property so it occurred to me to look for vacant "For Sale" waterfront property.  When I drove to this beautiful For Sale site, a handsome man was working in the yard giving me an opportunity to ask for permission.  He assured me it was ok to paint there.  

Maple Juice Cove, Maine by Carol Hopper
9x12, unframed, oil on gessobord
Click here to purchase

 The gorgeous house on Maple Juice Cove is still for sale and you might like to buy it at www.maplejuicecove.com.   The owner told me even more than I had previously learned about the Olson House which is located directly across the water to the left, out of my photograph.  If you are a lover of history and famous paintings and painters you might like to visit the Olson house website.

Edward Hopper is a very famous painter too, who painted this area.  I have thought about telling you how he is a relative of mine...through marriage.  Would you be interested in hearing that story?

PORTRAIT OF A TREE

PORTRAIT OF  A TREE

Let me tell you the truth...

Ready?

I participated in a weeklong plus three days

Starry Night Plein Air Event

in 

Corrales

New Mexico

The below painting is my 

FAVORITE

But...

it couldn't be counted as plein air

as this crazy tree had a mind and limbs of its own 

that didn't compute to any tree I knew

So tree and I fought

and I had to paint more than the maximum of the allowable 20% in the studio

Plein air paintings must be 80% done in fresh air.

Portrait of a Tree
12x9
Beautifully framed
Click here to purchase.

At 8 AM, I couldn't see the tree's shape
What was behind the tree and what was the tree?

Two days later I came back and took a photo of this apple tree from a kneeling position
Ah...I see the limbs...
Who trimmed this tree like this anyway?????
Does it produce more apples if it is a caricature?

Webster Dictionary:  caricature
  "1. exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics"

I had to edit out the entire orchard back in my studio
and paint sky behind the tree in order for the tree to be
seen as a portrait

Lesson learned from this:
Draw first
Paint later

CORRALES WINERY BLUE

CORRALES WINERY BLUE

Gate to No Where

I started painting this gate by 8:15 AM, on a typical intensely bright sunny New Mexican day.
All week I painted in Corrales, NM en plein air for the
Corrales Plein Air Event.

It was intense....
daily hauling equipment
dealing with an umbrella that had a mind of its own
Yet I promise you....
in NM you either use an umbrella or find a shady place in which to paint.


Yet it was a fun week filled with meeting other artists
working with Sue Winstead, a most talented coordinator
attending meetings and events

blocking in the underpainting with transparent colors

Umbrella working fine but later did the Mary Poppins thing

"Corrales Winery Blue"
12x12, framed, oil on gessobord
SOLD

FRANCE IN COLORFUL BLOOM

FRANCE IN COLORFUL BLOOM

FRANCE IN COLORFUL BLOOM
12x12 unframed oil on gessobord
Click here to purchase

For ten colorful painting days I stayed in this magical place.
In this courtyard alone at
Le Vieux Couvent in the Lot Region of France

there were painting opportunities to last for weeks.

I love the color of the flowers, medieval stone building, and the shade umbrella.

Cove's Edge, Maine

COVE'S EDGE, MAINE

COVE'S EDGE, MAINE
8x8, unframed oil on gessobord
plein air painting
Click here to purchase

For two glorious weeks I rented a cottage in Cushing, Maine.
This was my view from the lawn of the cottage
I found it glorious and painted on the property several times.
Floating in the water is Rockweed
which
at low tide
 one can clearly see is attached to the rocks.

Cushing Peninsula is the peninsula on which the Olson House is located
that very site of Andrew Wyeth's most famous painting
CHRISTINA'S WORLD

Across this cove from my cottage and this painting
is the home of Andrew Wyeth...one of his homes

  Andrew died in 2009
and is buried in the Olson family cemetery.
Why did he choose this spot?
No one knows for sure but we can say for sure
he loved and painted the Olson House
and its occupants
 for many many summers.

Andrew's gravestone
exactly as he years previously had pictured it
as Christina's stone!!!!

Christina and her brother Alvaro Olson's gravestone.
The two siblings died within mere weeks of one another
in different years

The Olson House
Cushing, Maine

Wyeth House, Monhegan Island

Wyeth House, Monhegan Island

Wyeth House, Monhegan Island
8x8, unframed, oil on gessobord
Click here to purchase

This house was built in 1906 for famous painter Rockwell Kent.  Following Kent's death, Jamie Wyeth bought this beautiful coastal home.  It overlooks Lobster Cove in the Gulf of Maine.  The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan Island, located 12 miles off the mainland, date to the mid 19th century and was firmly established by 1890.

I felt honored to carry a very heavy load of painting gear to this site, not knowing at the time I was painting a famed artist's home.  It just appealed to me.

Maine light is very high key.  Often the value of the sky is almost the same as that of the water.  Imagine the difference for me as compared to my home in NM where one almost never sees the effect of humidity in the air.

Lobster Cove on Monhegan Island

Rockwell Kent, Jamie Wyeth house on Monhegan Island

Village of Monhegan Island

Monhegan Island Light

NO LONGER IN SERVICE

NO LONGER IN SERVICE

NO LONGER IN SERVICE
12x9 unframed oil on museum quality gessobord
Click here to purchase

I have fully explored two peninsulas in Maine
St. George and Cushing/Friendship

Lobster boats experience heavy use in all kinds of weather
They are built well but there is an
end

Can be rebuilt! 

Being refurbished

Trawlers (draggers) no longer used due to fishing changes

There are so many aspects of fishing/shrimping/lobstering that support Maine.  Additionally 40% of all jobs are in there service industry....we tourists/painters love to eat fresh-off-the-boat lobster,

LOBSTER BUOYS STILL AT WORK

LOBSTER BUOYS STILL AT WORK

LOBSTER BUOYS STILL AT WORK
12x9 oil on museum quality panel
Click here to purchase

How can one spend only 15 days in Maine
 allegedly for the purpose of painting when there is so much to see and do
  Add in a dose of dealing with the guilt of NOT painting everyday.
very time consuming

 Best solution
 Do it over next year and schedule ten weeks instead
 Anybody in with me on this

Yes, I need your response

You can see how the lobsta' men's buoys
keep on working
AFTER
the buoys years on the sea

LOBSTERING IN FRIENDSHIP, MAINE

Yes, I painted today....plein air....the scene above....

the painting study was a scraper...

Perhaps I spent a bit too much time talking to the returning lobstermen. Some leave Friendship, home to one of Maine's most active lobster fleets at 4 AM, others maybe later. One person suggested the boat that suddenly blocked my view for my painting study would leave again tomorrow at 6 AM.

The predawn of Friendship sounds like a zoo at feeding time as boats are revved up and men yell across the water to one another. Using GPS, fog and dark are no enemy.

 In fact one lobsterman told me the sea and his over 500 traps and their locations are as familiar to him as his own bedroom. This man is aging and told me the traps weigh the same as when he was younger, but now they are heavier. I understand. The old toothless character told me lobstering hasn't changed much since his grandfather's day...just a few more toys of technology.  He still listens to the morning radio report with one weather eye on the set of the sea and the cast of the day.   Why oh why didn't I think to photograph this man?  

So "year after year,  he harvest the sea on his rounds, unburdened by the need to till or fertilize his ocean pastures....    Any Maine lobsterman will tell you that lobstering spoils a man for any other way of life."  (from the book Night Train at Wiscasset Station, An Unforgettable Portrait of Maine and Its People)

Just a scraper study...value and hue too far off

ANDREW WYETH- "Christina's World"

Andrew Wyeth and "Christina's World"

What a wonderful first two days in Maine!  I spent hours at the Olson House, the subject of numerous works of art by Andrew Wyeth, including Christina's World, 1948.  Wyeth's series of drawings, watercolors and tempera paintings featuring Christina Olson, her brother Alvaro and the house itself, occupied Wyeth from 1939 through 1968.

Wyeth expressively documented life on the isolated, saltwater farm in many of his works.  He said, "In the portraits of that house, the windows are eyes or pieces of the soul almost.  To me, each window is a different part of Christina's life".  

Look at my photographs to see the hill up which Wyeth watched Christina crawl because a disability prevented her from walking.  See Wyeth's grave, 2009, where he chose to buried...in the Olson family gravesite, descendants of the Hathorn family.  The Hathorn's settled the saltwater farm in 1743.  They  were seafarers and shipmasters.

On my second day in Maine I spent hours at the Farnsworth Art Museum where many of the three generations of Wyeth artists (NC, Andrew and Jamie) works are on display.  

Andrew's home is across the cove from my cottage.  It is a beautiful home with an awesome boat anchored in the cove. Though he died five years ago, the family still owns the house.  To the left of the house and in a cleared opening is another Wyeth home, one of Andrew's relative.

Olson House

Christina's Kitchen Window

Christina's Kitchen Window from the Interior

Andrew Wyeth's grave and tombstone

The hill up which Christina crawled in the painting
Christina's World

Garden Shed on Broad Cove, my home for two weeks

PATCHWORK FIELDS IN FRANCE

PATCHWORK FIELDS IN FRANCE

Patchwork Fields in France
9x12 oil on gessobord
Click here to purchase

France is a gorgeous country.
The Lot Region is a farming area with many small quaint towns, rolling hills and patchwork fields.
I painted in the hot sun, 
getting a well earned farmer-tan,
 looking out across fields and valleys. 
Sheep came up to the fence three times to visit me
 and eat while one sheep piled next to the other. 

 "Give each other room", I called.

Silence

 Oh

 I'm in France  Wrong language

Then the "sheep head" bleated and off they ambled for 
greener pastures

still stuck to one another